Run Away Home

by Terri Farley

  Brynna’s freckles stood out, rust-red against her pale, perspiring face. With her jaw set and eyes shut, she swayed, struggling to stay upright.

  Hurry, Sam thought as she watched Dallas sprinkle something from a bag—kitty litter?—around the truck’s back tires, doing everything he could to make the tires grip. The tires kept spinning, spitting gravel back at him, and Dallas threw the bag down in disgust.

  He marched up to the driver’s-side window and rapped on it.

  “Forget it!” he shouted at Ross, then took long, stomping steps toward Gram’s Buick.

  “This’ll work,” Sam assured Brynna, but now her stepmother’s face was dreamy.

  Sam was prepared for Brynna to be tense and in pain, but Brynna looked as if she’d left her body for another world. It was kind of creepy.

  The truck’s engine went silent in mid-whine and Ross climbed out. Tugging his dark Stetson down to his nose, he didn’t look over at Sam and Brynna. He followed Dallas to the Buick, swept his coat sleeve across the car’s windshield, and cleared the glass of snow. For a few seconds.

  Dallas dug at the snow in front of the car, clearing a path for the tires. Ross started the engine with a roar. Then he rolled down a window to motion Sam and Brynna into the backseat.

  “Let’s go,” Sam said, and they plunged into the wind-whipped flakes, eyes set on the Buick’s back door.

  Sam held the door open, but Brynna glanced down at Dallas. He’d thrown the shovel aside. They could see dirt clinging to his palms and fingertips.

  “He’s going to give himself a heart attack,” Brynna shouted. “Make him quit.”

  Sam didn’t have to. As soon as Brynna plopped down in the backseat, Ross shouted “Get back!” and Dallas jumped away from the car.

  Sam slammed the car door, crossed her fingers, and leaned forward, as if that would help the car go.

  Fishtailing through the snow, the Buick headed for the bridge. Brynna covered her eyes, laughing in relief, as they shot over the wooden boards.

  They reached the other side before the Buick slowed, then stuck solid.

  “D-d-dang it!” Ross struck the steering wheel with the heel of his hand.

  Sam looked through the back window. Through the coating of snow, she made out Dallas pushing against the back of the car. As the engine screamed, Dallas tried to rock the Buick loose.

  “I can help,” Sam said, unsnapping her seat belt.

  “No.” Brynna grabbed Sam’s arm. Hard. “I’m going back inside. We can do this, Sam.”

  Maybe you can, Sam’s mind wailed.

  “M-ma’am,” Ross protested, turning to appeal to Brynna, but she shook her head so hard, her wet braid lashed Sam’s cheek.

  “Time’s up,” Brynna said.

  Her sigh told Sam that even if the Buick came loose this instant, they weren’t going to make it to the hospital before the baby came.

  Brynna reached for the door handle and all but tumbled out into the snow, but she was up and standing by the time Sam rounded the back of the car.

  Brynna stared upward as if the cold flakes felt good on her face, but her relieved stance didn’t last. As if someone had roped her knees and jerked them forward, she gave into her labor pains, falling to her knees and leaning forward with both palms in the snow.

  Before Sam could ask for help, Ross was there. He swooped Brynna up into his arms.

  “I can walk,” she insisted faintly, but Ross didn’t notice.

  As they made their way toward the house, Sam thought it had a weird glow, greenish, like Oz or like a spaceship, but it was probably just the house lights, diffused through the snowflakes. Or maybe it was stress.

  Sam only knew that once they got inside and had this baby, life would never be the same.

  After that, things went fast.

  As Brynna settled on the couch again, Sam started to phone the doctor, but Brynna said it would be a waste of time and money.

  “Dr. Wadia is on call at the hospital tonight and I bet there’s an emergency room full of people who’ve had snow-related accidents. We’ll be fine, Sam.”

  Then, with her eyebrows lowered and kind of kinked in an expression Sam couldn’t interpret, Brynna ordered Dallas and Ross to leave. They seemed to have expected it, but Sam hated to see them go, and it must have shown in her expression, because Dallas touched her shoulder, winked, and said, “We’ll be just outside.”

  Brynna lay on her side on the couch. The snow had silenced every sound but the grandfather clock’s swinging pendulum.

  It wasn’t enough to have Dallas and Ross nearby or to have a stack of books, Sam thought. Brynna had taken good care of herself during her pregnancy. Everything would probably turn out fine, but helping Dark Sunshine give birth was totally different from helping Brynna.

  Suddenly, Sam knew what to do.

  “I’m calling Three Ponies,” Sam blurted. “Jake’s mom has had six kids.”

  “That’s a good idea, Sam,” Brynna said, and though her eyes stayed closed, Sam saw the kink in her brows vanish. “I hope you can get through.”

  Please, please, please let the phone be working, Sam prayed as she dialed.

  “Hello?”

  Sam felt her neck muscles go floppy at the comforting sound of Jake’s voice.

  “Jake?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He must have heard her worry in the way she’d pronounced his name, because there was no sullen dullness in his voice. He sounded alert, on guard, and ready.

  Sam almost laughed with relief. This was not the voice from the school parking lot, saying “Your friend ain’t here no more.” This was the voice of her friend and he was where he’d always been, standing right beside her.

  “Brynna’s in labor and it’s just the two of us here,” Sam said.

  “Man oh man,” Jake said quietly.

  “Do you think your mom—”

  “Yeah, she’ll know what to do.”

  Sam heard Maxine Ely’s voice ask a question in the background and wondered how it would feel to have a house full of people with only one “she.”

  “We’ll be there as soon as we can,” Jake said, before he explained to his mother.

  “But Jake, the roads are bad. We tried to drive and—” Sam broke off at Brynna’s sudden gasp.

  “We’ll be there,” Jake repeated. “You just hang in there, Brat.”

  While they waited, Sam followed Brynna’s instructions and called on some of the stuff she’d memorized from Gram’s home-birth handbook. She joined in Brynna’s deep breathing, gave her the pink lemonade ice cubes, and listened for tires crunching into the ranch yard.

  Once, Sam made it as far as the big kitchen window and saw nothing but endless white before Brynna called her back and asked where the heck Wyatt was—as if she’d forgotten she’d been the one to send Dad away.

  Sam rebraided Brynna’s hair when the tendrils that stuck in waves to her face annoyed her.

  Jake and his mom couldn’t get through, Sam thought in despair. What if they’d been hurt?

  She could call Dr. Scott! Sure, he was a veterinarian, but maybe he’d be in the neighborhood and he could just drop by and take over!

  Sam covered her face with both hands. Was it a measure of her desperation that calling the vet sounded like such a good idea?

  It had been nearly an hour since Jake had told her to hang in there. She was trying, but Brynna was getting really uncomfortable.

  “Do I hear Blaze barking?” Brynna asked.

  Sam held her breath to listen and all at once she heard it, too. Blaze was barking.

  Sam ran into the kitchen and stared through the window over the sink. She saw two horses being led toward the barn. Snow clung to their manes and their dark bodies looked identical. She couldn’t make out who was leading them, but if Blaze was barking—

  “Sam, open up! I’m freezing!”

  The knocking was muffled, but rapid. The voice was female and Sam couldn’t remember locking the door.
r />   She hadn’t.

  Wearing a puffy red coat that covered her from head to ankles, Mrs. Ely fell inward in a puff of snow. She stayed on her feet, despite Blaze. The Border collie bounded in beside her, skidding on wet feet as he barked in excitement.

  “What do you think of this crazy weather?” Mrs. Ely asked.

  “How did you—” Sam broke off, replaying the scene she’d glimpsed from the window. The only two horses she knew that looked so much alike were Witch and Chocolate Chip. “You rode over?”

  “Dashing through the snow,” Mrs. Ely said, nodding. “The roads are closed. Heck Ballard’s out there with some guys he’s deputized and they’re not letting anyone through, even with four-wheel drive or chains.”

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Sam moaned.

  “Even though I’m no midwife, I guess having six babies qualifies me as something of an expert.”

  Dizzied by Mrs. Ely’s rapid-fire words, Sam took a minute to gather her thoughts.

  Scolding Blaze, Maxine shrugged off her coat and hung it on the front porch.

  “So how is she? Napping?” she asked when she returned.

  “No,” Brynna called from the other room and Maxine hurried in to help.

  Sam only wondered once what had become of Jake.

  An hour passed like a minute, and then Brynna gasped, “Just about there.”

  Brynna’s sweat-sheened face took on the look of a woman running the last minutes of a race. Then, the baby was emerging.

  “You go ahead, Sam,” Maxine Ely said gently.

  “Go ahead and what?”

  “Take him,” Maxine said.

  And then she was holding him.

  Sam couldn’t believe she held a little person slippery as a fish, but perfect in every human detail. While Maxine dabbed at the baby’s nose and mouth, Sam returned the baby’s gray-eyed stare. She had a brother.

  “Is he breathing?” Brynna asked.

  “Of course he is,” Maxine cooed.

  The baby answered, too. Giving a single, red-faced bleat, he shook a tiny curled fist at Sam.

  “Isn’t he supposed to cry?” Sam asked. “That’s not really crying, is it?”

  “Don’t forget,” Brynna said in a faded voice. “Cody’s one of you stubborn Forsters.”

  Cody?

  Maxine and Brynna were laughing, but Sam was thinking the name belonged to a calf roper or a high-desert cowboy, not a teeny little baby.

  But when Maxine took Cody from Sam and laid him on Brynna’s chest, Brynna kept talking to Cody as if he understood.

  “Yes, he’s one of you stubborn Forsters,” she said again, “and he plans on doing things his own way, starting with being born at home, right here on River Bend Ranch.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sam couldn’t remember ever feeling so proud as she was the moment she flung open the kitchen door. Of course, Brynna had done most of the work, and Maxine had made sure everything was done correctly, but she’d stood by, helping, hadn’t she? And the baby had turned out absolutely fine.

  Sam gathered herself to plunge into the falling snow, headed for the bunkhouse, but she didn’t get very far.

  Shoulders hunched inside bulky coats, wiping their noses and stamping their boots against the cold, Ross and Dallas waited on the front porch.

  “I have a little brother named Cody,” Sam announced.

  “Now, do ya?” Dallas said, face covered with a grin.

  “That’s fine, just fine.” Ross nodded about ten times before reaching out to pump her arm in a handshake.

  “This is so weird, but he’s really cute. Do you want to see him?”

  “Later,” Dallas said. “Just now we’re going to go make some coffee. Neither me nor Ross wanted to be the one to hike over to the bunkhouse and make it. We were afraid we might miss something. And Jake—”

  “Where is Jake?” Sam asked.

  “Don’t know,” Dallas said. “He didn’t want to come inside because he was afraid you might ask him to help.”

  “He seemed kinda squeamish,” Ross joked.

  “But we’re good and ready to go fire up that stove now,” Dallas said, “’less you need something?”

  Sam’s mind spun with the names of everyone she should call, of all she should be doing for Brynna and the baby, but Brynna had only wanted a long drink of water and Maxine had brought it to her.

  Sam remembered how Brynna had smiled while Cody, eyes tightly closed, nuzzled her neck and made little kissing movements with his lips.

  “Samantha?” Dallas said. “They’re both well, inside, aren’t they? No fever or nothin’?”

  Dallas’s voice jerked her back and Sam shook her head. “No, sorry. Brynna says she’s fine, and Maxine thinks so, too, but I’ll keep watch. I was, I don’t know, drifting, I guess, but the horses…”

  “Horses,” Ross echoed, tilting his head to one side.

  “Should the horses be in the barn?” Sam asked.

  “Ace and your filly are in the barn, but the rest of ’em are in the run-in shed, cozied up and happy. We’ll give ’em some extra hay, though,” Dallas said.

  “That’s good,” Sam said, but she was thinking of Dad. “I wish I could call my dad.”

  “Jake said he heard Sheriff Ballard was holding traffic outside Alkali,” Dallas told her.

  Which meant there was no way to reach him, Sam thought. But then Ross and Dallas were nodding and touching the brims of their frosty hats in good-bye.

  By the time they were halfway across the ranch yard, both men were covered in white. Dallas looked like a bowlegged snowman. Ross lumbered like a polar bear. Both of them were chuckling as Sam closed the door and went to take another look at her new baby brother.

  Inside, Sam turned the heater up. Thank goodness the storm hadn’t brought a power failure, she thought as she hurried to the phone.

  Hand on the receiver, she glanced at the clock. It was just after three. The horse therapy program would have ended. She was surprised Dad and Gram hadn’t called from someplace in town. Cell phone service was too spotty to depend upon, so Dad wouldn’t carry one, and the radios they’d had installed in the ranch vehicles wouldn’t work that far away.

  They were probably someplace on the road between Darton and home, Sam told herself, unless they were shopping. If so, that wouldn’t last long. Dad would nag Gram to rush and they’d probably be back in the truck half an hour after they’d found a parking place.

  Who should she call first? Jen? Aunt Sue in San Francisco? Everyone at Deerpath Ranch?

  As she thought of Deerpath Ranch and the Dream Catcher program, Sam pictured shivering but determined Darby Carter.

  That kid was something else, Sam thought. Though she was shy, sickly, and more comfortable with books than with people, she had guts and loved horses. She definitely had the makings of a cowgirl. Sam would bet Darby was helping with the golden mustang and the orphan foals right now, with her inhaler in one pocket and her book in the other.

  Smiling, Sam picked up the phone. There was a dial tone, sort of, but a weird scratchy sound was in the background. She dialed Jen’s number and the scratchy sound got louder, but nothing else happened. She checked to make sure the phone was plugged into the wall, and it was. She hung up, picked up, and this time there wasn’t even a dial tone.

  How lucky was she that it had been working when she called Three Ponies? Sam gave a loud sigh, then peeked into the living room. Brynna and Cody were asleep on the couch and Maxine was dozing in Dad’s recliner, so Sam decided to make herself some lunch. After all, it had been a long time since breakfast.

  When Sam settled down with a bowl of soup, she crunched crackers over the top. It was a habit Gram called rude, but she figured she deserved a reward. Sam was finishing off her last bite when Brynna awakened hungry and Maxine helped Sam feed the new mother everything she wanted, so she’d be strong enough to feed Cody everything he wanted.

  Finally, Sam washed dishes as she wondered what had become of
Jake. He’d ridden over with his mom, and he’d slipped inside once. Though she had been upstairs, Sam had heard him tell Maxine he’d gotten through to his dad on their walkie-talkies, and let him know they’d be spending the night at River Bend Ranch, but then he’d disappeared outside again.

  Now, Sam heard Jake stamping snow off his boots. The outside door opened and closed. It had to be Jake, because Dallas or Ross would have knocked. Sam heard a rustling sound and guessed he was hanging his coat on the porch alongside his mother’s, and leaving his hat there, too, but she didn’t turn away from the sink until she heard him say, “Dark as the inside of a cow out there.”

  “Thanks for helping,” Sam said. She wiped her hands dry on her jeans as she turned around.

  Jake’s blue corduroy shirt looked surprisingly neat, but his hair hung wet on his shoulders and damp spots were spreading.

  “Thanks for riding over here with your mom, too.”

  Jake shrugged and glanced toward the living room.

  Sam answered Jake’s unasked question. “They’re talking about baby stuff.”

  “I saw him. Cody.” Jake seemed to turn the name over and find it to his liking. “He’s sure little.” Jake rubbed the back of his neck and looked longingly at the door.

  Even though they both felt awkward and nothing had been settled between them, Sam didn’t want Jake to leave.

  She’d give him one chance to act civilized and just go on as friends.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Sam asked. “I could make a sandwich that probably wouldn’t poison you.”

  “Sure,” Jake said, then he stood right behind her, staring over her shoulder as she sliced bread, spread it with mustard, then layered on roast beef and cheese. He didn’t give her directions or advice, and Sam decided she liked him watching and accepting a lot better than if Jake had sat down at the table, assuming he’d be waited upon.

  Gram would have slapped his hand if she’d seen him snatch the sandwich from the cutting board and take a bite before Sam gave him a plate, but she just asked, “Do you want something to drink?”

  Jake stopped chewing to ask, “Tea?”